Daily Image - Feb 2013 Archive

01 Feb 13. A little late this morning as we were out to the wee hours of the morning attending a presentation by Ken Sklute, a professional photographer from Tempe, AZ who, as it turned out, had just returned on Wed from shooting the Aurora in Iceland. He had some absolutely amazing photographs to show from the trip, all unedited, as he said, as he hadn't yet had time to do anything with them, nor rehearse his presentation because of the time limitations, i.e., one day. It was a very good talk by an excellent teacher who is truly in love with what he does. After showing us perhaps 30+ Aurora images he shared his work on ice caves, volcanoes, puddles of ice, and lastly the Amish. All his material was in color, until he presented his Amish stuff, all in B&W, some of it in IR. It was easy to see why he has been photographer of the year for 25 of the last 32 years. I was a bit surprised to see that he plays with ice puddles, as I like to do the same thing. He even commented on how breaking up a puddle is ruining someone else's photo (the dogs should have been in attendance) . Since Ken shared several ice puddles with us, I figured I'd share one more, but a bit different from the previous of a couple weeks back. This time I've stressed the structure of the ice and in the process emphasized what I think looks like the Paleolithic paintings by early man of roughly 30,000 years ago, such as found in the Chauvet Cave. My "find" isn't quite so elaborate, but you get the idea. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

04 Feb 13. A couple of weeks back while sitting in a parking area waiting for Jan, I noticed that the landscape plants were covered, in varying degrees, with frost, so I figured a great way to pass the wait time was to grab a shot or two of frost covered plants. No matter how I attempt this kind of shot, it always seems as though the ice crystals come up just a bit on the soft side. I'm not certain what causes this as the portions of the leaves that are lacking the frost crystals are totally sharp, so the crystals, being not more than an eighth of an inch in height, should be also. If I were shooting very close up, as in macro work, I might have an explanation for it, but with shots like the one for today, taken at a distance of perhaps10 - 15 feet away, I don't, and all should be sharp in a space of an eighth of an inch. Seemingly no different than shooting an insect on a leaf, but apparently, at least in my case, it is. This image could likely be cut into two pieces, with the horizontal division coming at the tip of the center downward pointing leaf. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /8 with fill flash.

05 Feb 13. A few days back you will recall I shared a color image of the approach to our house with beams of sunlight pouring across it. This is another in that series of images, this one taken immediately in front of the old 8 grade (1-8) school that my father attended in his youth. And that was it. The trees I'm thinking either weren't this big, or perhaps not there at all, and even though I should remember from my youth, I don't. But they serve to make the image what it is. For some of you I think it will be somewhat grainy, but it is the grain that makes the image work for me. I could remove it, as can any of you with noise removal who find the grain objectionable, but if you do I think you will find it less interesting. Not sure what kind of paper I'd like to print this on, but it would be one that tended to emphasize both black and white as opposed to a full gray scale. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Apeture Priority; ISO 400; 1/320 sec @ f / 5.

06 Feb 13. While the philosophy of the two biggest operating systems for personal computers seems to be having programs that do everything, the better OS, Linux, a variant of Unix if you will, has the philosophy like its bigger brother that it is better to have many small programs that do just one thing perfectly and chain output between them to get the best, and in the process, fastest performance possible. Along that philosophy I have been playing with a new (to me) printing program that does basically just that, prepare images for print. Now that may seem odd as I print so very little, but one can print to file as well as paper, and the results I'm seeing are very encouraging. Its only drawback so far that I can ascertain is that there is a rather steep learning curve, but one which is offset by the best support I've ever encountered, period. So I've been spending some time lately working with this program to see if I can get more out of a huge backlog of images (c70K) I haven't shared yet. My efforts to date, and I'm just beginning to understand the program, strongly suggest that it is going to be the ticket. The part I haven't yet fully determined is exactly where it will fit in the post processing workflow. At the moment I believe that it will be either used after I've made all the manipulations to the image I want, or, it will be used by itself with out any prior manipulation to the images. I've worked with it both ways and found that each approach has it own rewards. Today's submission was worked entirely in the print program without anything additional being done to it. In other words, the original RAW file was loaded into the program, a few small "corrections" applied, and then it was printed to file as a .jpg. So here is a shot from the '07 trip to the Grand Tetons. You make your own evaluation, but I like it. D200; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 100; 1/160 sec @ f 13.

07 Feb 13. By now all of you must be aware that I love to shoot insects in the wild, and in particular, bees. Should you be wondering why bees, it is because they are so active and attempting to get the perfect shot of a bee in action is a major challenge for me, one which I doubt I'll ever achieve because as I get better (luckier) at it I raise my own standards. That gives me a life long challenge. Getting an acceptable shot for me now requires far more work than it did say 10 years previous. Now, getting the acceptable shot on a favorite flower is an even better challenge, and the Canadian or Canada Thistle, Cirsium arvense, which grows freely over our septic system, just happens to be among my favorite flowers, even if it is considered as being a bit invasive and called, among other things, the Lettuce from Hell Thistle. Now to find one in full bloom with a bee or two climbing on the blossom is nothing short of a gift, so when I saw such in the back yard last summer, I couldn't resist. I got a couple dozen shots before the players parted company, among them the image for today, but they all suffered from harsh lighting. Now I suppose that I might have employed a device of any of several kinds to soften the light, but I didn't think the bees would hang around long enough for that to work and the possibility that such a device might scare them off also figured into the equation of working with what I had. I've dodged the base of the flower a bit to bring out its texture which was basically lost in the original and burned in a couple of hot areas, typical darkroom procedures, but that's about all that was done except for some cropping. D300s; 18 - 200' Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /10.

08 Feb 13. Out for a drive last week we passed by a spot that had a whole patch of pussy willows growing right next to the roadway. That was just too much for Jan, so we had to stop so she could venture out and snip a few small branches of one of her favorite flowers. They came home with us and found themselves on quick display in the hallway. As attractive as they are when just the soft fuzzy buds, they are rather spectacular when they fully bloom, which they started doing on Wednesday. So as long as they were in the house showing off, I thought I'd attempt to capture some of their beauty. This was shot indoors using full flash on camera, a basic no-no, but since they were set against a dark gray felt background, I thought I might be able to get away with it. I've enhanced the texture a very small amount, less than 10%, just to show how much pollen has already been released just by being in a warm environment. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /16 with full flash.

11 Feb 13. All of the homes along our street are set back a considerable distance from the road, some quite so. But no matter how far back they are set, they have in common a drive way that leads to them, some of gravel, some of dirt, and some landscaped by nature that are truly beautiful. A few doors to our south there is a drive way that has to be the winner for beauty, with two sides and a center of moss and two "maintained" paths separating them that serve as the place for the vehicular contact. It is of course all in green, many shades of green, and when I took the picture it was that which I had planned on sharing. But while I was working on the image it felt as though there was more to tell, and so I began playing with it to see if I could tease out that additional information. After trying several different color approaches, it struck me that it might want to tell its story in B&W, so I converted it to that and really liked it, but it still wanted to say more. So I tried working with it using a couple of my favorite filters, and then I realized what was needed. The landscape I was viewing is the product of eons of buildup of foliage that has been provided by the trees, so why not attempt to represent that aspect of the forest scene I was experiencing on a daily basis. When I did I finally was able to produce, at least in my mind, what I thought the scene was trying to tell me. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/30 sec @ f / 5.6 hand held.

12 Feb 13. Another in the Tuesday B&W series; yesterday's didn't count. This was taken back in '09 on that autumn day shoot when I managed to ignore all the Mountaineers 10 Rules of Safety and came very close to doing my body some serious damage, but got the photo(s). At the time I definitely was not thinking B&W, but, as I am now, this image seems like a natural candidate. As you probably remember, a couple weeks ago I was discussing the desire for "filters" that would give me both paper surfaces and textures from the good old days of film. I had one all along, just hadn't played with it sufficiently to realize what I had. Topaz Labs has a filter, B&W Effects, that does all that, and much more. Using just that filter, I easily converted this color image into what you are,seeing, Mt Rainier from one of the trails close to the parking lot at the Paradise Visitors Center. Nikon 300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

14 Feb 13. Figure it is time to get off my butt and do some small amount of something as opposed to just thinking about the reminder of the surgery, so let's see if I can get things back to normal with the daily mailings. If anyone thinks barnyard typing is slow, try it with just one finger; think I need to find a clever term for that. Just go down the road aways past the brown silo on your left, then the country store on yer right, and continue past the "T" on yer left a ways further, you can't miss it. Remember having ever received those kinds of directions from a old timer about a place you wanted to visit for the first time? And when you FINALLY found it you realized that the name he used was other than that by which currently known. Yeah, me too; sometimes it resulted in a fun adventure discovering substantially more about the area than you'd ever need, other times, when behind the eight ball, not so. Now just down the road a bit, i.e, c5 miles, there is a very small nature preserve which is sometimes referred to as the Audubon Bird Sanctuary. You will never find it unless others have beat you to the 4 parking spots parallel to the road. There is a nice sign identifying it, but since that sign reads Foulweather Bluff Nature Preserve, you may likely pass it by even if you see it. Unless of course you are just out looking for a potentially promising place to shoot. Should that be the case, you will meander along a well kept walking path eventually leading to its exit on the shore of Puget Sound. I've visited thrice, and have found it nice, but other than the exit area onto the beach, our own 10A has just as much to offer, sans trails. With Puget Sound at my back, this shot of the marsh was taken looking across it. While we were there a juvenile Bald Eagle made a pass to check us out.The road to get to it is at the juncture of the reeds and trees. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 9.

15 Feb 13. I imagine that the majority of folks on these mailing lists consider butterflies as warm season performers, and not something you might encounter on a cool (mid 60s) winter's day, but such was the case for this critter. Exactly what type of butterfly it is I'm far from knowing, but based solely on its coloration and wing pattern I guessing it is some form of Monarch. Walking around Balboa Park in January of 2011, we watched in amazement as several of these beautiful critters began the last phase of their lives. It was one of those times when we just happened to be in the correct place at the right time. We had planned on visiting the zoo for a couple of hours, but it was so expensive that we elected to just meander around the grounds instead. A good choice all around it turned out to be. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 320; 1/60 sec @ f /11 with full flash.

18 Feb 13. While spending some study time on Sunday reading the blogs of other photographers, I came across the following: "Photoshop? No thanks said Nikon Tragically, in my view, Nikon saw itself as a hardware supplier and did not see any reason to extend the Nikon brand into software or services. In 1988, at the MacWorld show, the Nikon team was approached by two brothers who offered them the rights to market an imaging software application. The brothers were Thomas and John Knoll. The application was called Photoshop. Whilst there was a great deal of enthusiasm for the product from the Nikon European and US marketing teams to market the software under the Nikon brand, the Japanese HQ decided Nikon was not a software company and they could not see a market for it so turned down the opportunity. The rest as they say is history. (Just for the record, Kodak as well as several other photographic giants, turned Photoshop down too.) [Adobe decided to purchase the license to distribute Photoshop in September 1988. Photoshop 1.0 for Macintosh was released in 1990.]" Some of you may remember a similar situation with a camera that produced instant photos, offered initially to Kodak who said there was no market for it, which was subsequently marketed by its developer, Dr Land, hence the name Polaroid Land Camera. Now the tie in to all this for today's image is that I was playing around with varying the saturation of a color image to give a sense of the atmospheric conditions (cold) at the time of capture. I had tried doing it several ways but ultimately decided on a set of individual layers to control micro detail, toning, and masking, to achieve the final composite. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.

19 Feb 13. Driving along the Baker Lake road we decided to press our luck and follow it to the end. As we made our way over some less than perfect road conditions, but a roadway on whose sides there was some wonderful scenery, we felt encouraged as ever so often we were passed by a vehicle going in the opposite direction. Not seeing anything off the side of the road where it shouldn't have been, we kept going until we truly reached the end of the road at which point we exited the SUV, and all three of us had some fun in the snow. Since Maggie loves snow, we couldn't resist letting her romp around for a bit and as usual she seemed to be having a good time in the white stuff.. Now the road didn't really end where we stopped, it just wasn't plowed any further. So while it was the end of the road for us, I'm rather certain the local inhabitants didn't see it as such. I took a few shots of the roadway just disappearing and selected one of them for today's submission. The original was in color, but I took it into a filter to render it B&W, and then added a very tiny amount of toning, both of which being adjustments frequently made in the chemical darkroom. Nikon D300s;18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1.

20 Feb 13. A few days back I shared a shot of some red leaves coated with frost. That particular morning was a rather beautiful one in that most of the vegetation close to the ground was completely covered with the frost. As it turned out we were traveling to a doctor's appointment and not realizing the frost was present, didn't leave in time to allow for shooting any photos along the way, and there were many excellent opportunities lost that day. But the parking lot for the medical building is well landscaped and all of the plants were displaying a coat of white in varying degrees, based on their exposure to the morning sun. This clump of grasses was just beginning to be warmed by the sun and gave me a few minutes to play with it before all the white was gone. This is a straight from the camera shot with the exception of a small amount of cropping. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 8.

21 Feb 13. With the apparent success of B&W Tuesdays, I'm thinking of dedicating Thursdays to creative images. That would force me to work in the two areas and try to improve that type of work. We'll go with a creative image for this Thursday, one of some ferns that grow alongside our road. Now ferns are really a wonderful plant to work with as they offer so many different views from the initial unfurling, to the fully mature plant, followed by the beautiful change of color in the fall. This shot was of the ferns in frost, and I worked on it from several different approaches, those of pattern, color, and design. The choice for today was that of design, and I made several different versions of the design aspect. My final choice was to select one that emphasized the frost which is represented by the color white sans any texture. Where the image is more of a copperish tone are areas where the frost had already melted. Might make for either a good puzzle or wall paper pattern. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 5.6.

22 Feb 13. Based on the overwhelming response, or rather the lack thereof, of the idea of Creative Thursdays, I guess we'll abandon that idea and just stay with B&W Tuesdays. But that doesn't mean I have to limit the B&W stuff to just Tuesdays, so we are going with one for today. Now, for those of you who are genuinely interested in B&W material, I'll go out on a limb and recommend two products to you, both of which you can employ as stand alone products, or in conjunction with other graphics editors. The first of these is from Topaz Labs, and is called B&W Effects 2. It is a plugin for several different graphics editors, or, can be run in conjunction with another product from Topaz Labs called photoFXlab. It is a very good set of integrated software and works by applying a filtered layer on top of your original image. There are several more programs from other companies that work in the same fashion, all with varying degrees of success. While the filter from Topaz is the least expensive of these filtering programs, I find it to be the best of the breed. On the other end of the spectrum is just one program that works by mapping the colors to their respective B&W values, and that program is from DxO Labs. Their premier offering is called DxO Optics Pro and comes in two versions, one for the DX sensor bodies and the other for both the DX and FX sensor bodies. This product also maps each individual camera body to the lens mounted on it as well as the sensor such that you get a result unlike anything you can experience from any other piece of software.They also offer another piece of software called DxO Film Pack 3 that allows you to accurately emulate many B&W films. If you are even a slightly curious type, I would encourage you to look into either or both of these companies programs, depending upon your desire to work in B&W. The image for today was prepared using the Topaz product, and it took perhaps only two minutes to prepare, so you can achieve some very nice results with minimal expense. And for the record, whenever Topaz Labs releases a new product, it is generally offered at roughly half price for the first month. To date, they have never charged for any of their upgrades and some of their products are now in version 5. I know of no other company that offers such. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 8.

25 Feb 13. Over the last couple of days I have been engaged in a discussion of the relevancy of an image's original capture date with respect to the creating of the final outcome. Ansel Adams - some of you will recognize the name - has been credited with saying that you do not take a photograph, you create it. I would happen to agree with that comment, and as I've stated here numerous times, I consider what I'm doing to be art; if it resembles life all the better. The shot for today is a current image, but certainly not what the camera captured. As I was looking over many of the shots I took on the trip to the Skagit area last month, I noticed this one particular ice sculpture that reminded me of a person waving his arms. The individual is wearing some kind of head gear and has something in one or both of his hands. You may see something different, or it may just be that you see the individual as doing something in particular, such as conducting an orchestra, or a sailor waving in an aircraft of the flight deck, or who knows. In any event, it is a created final from a base image that gave me the idea. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

26 Feb 13. Easy walking distance from our house, and just past the westerly end of my grandparents former property, is a stand of trees, the type of which I'm not certain, other than they are very light colored when their leaves are no longer on the branches. The entire time I was commuting while building this house I kept telling myself as I passed them by twice daily, that I needed to try and capture them in some form. A little over four weeks ago it struck me that taking them leaf less might make for an interesting shot and so one afternoon when we had sky that would allow for such (not raining), I paused the SUV long enough to jump out and take a few shots. Looking them over I found I liked the composition, but not the color or lighting. But I had an idea that converting the image into a high key B&W might work, and in fact, as you by now are likely guessing, I think it did. The conversion to high key dropped out any chance for strong blacks, something that I feel would make the image stronger, but in reality there were none to begin with. The image as it stands can, or could, be manipulated quite a bit, especially easily by applying an overall tint to it, or it could be rendered as a painting, or even converted to a negative image. All of these approaches would be reasonably interesting, and I'd actually like to see it converted to a painting, so, for those of you who are painting some of these images, how about showing me how you interpret this one. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 7.1.

27 Feb 13. A few day's back I shared a shot of a marsh taken at the Foulweather Bluff Nature Preserve. I was rather taken by the lovely colors of the reeds in that marsh, and the image I'm sharing today is a close up of those reeds. Nothing really spectacular about the reeds in general, but it was the gradation of color from the base to the tips of the reeds that caught my eye. It is almost as though they have been in deeper water at some time and "rusted" in the portions that have been under water the longest, or perhaps it is just the effect of tidal movement. Whatever the reason, and I'm reasonably certain it is due to tidal movement, the combination of the golden reeds and reflected blue sky make to my way of thinking a nice image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1.

28 Feb 13. Here we are at Theatrical Thursday as it has been suggested I market the creative stuff, and the image for today is definitely a creative one. But had I not told you so you might have missed the fact. The top half of the image is absolutely photographic and I've enhanced the fine detail to accentuate the mountain and the clouds playing hide and seek with it, but the bottom half has been rendered into what might be best described as a water color, and of course one can't have both in a single picture. Now the original foreground (trees and such) might really best be described as blah from a photographic perspective, but by applying a simple filter to the entire image, and then masking it out of the top half of the photo, we get some interesting foreground to accompany the beautiful background. You are looking at Mt Baker from a perspective not often shared although it is easily reached if one wants to take such a photo. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.